It always used to be said, more or less accurately, that the Conservative Party was a business, but the Labour Party was a family. Or that the Labour Party was a family, but the Conservative Party was a business.

The order depended on the point that the speaker was making. In either case, though, it was a point well made.

Yet Brandon Lewis has just called the Conservative Party "a family", in one of many features of this Conference that are eerily reminiscent of a Labour one 10 or so years ago, but with a much smaller and older audience.

Then again, the people who attended Labour Party Conferences 10 years ago are by definition older now.

And today, they have been addressed by an old Minister under Gordon Brown who is still not a member of the Conservative Party.

He shrieked against Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, of course. But he regurgitated their policies, diluted in the regurgitation. Expect those to be the two themes of this week.

The election of Adam Price as Leader of Plaid Cymru would not normally be much of a story. But in 2004, Price tried to impeach Tony Blair over Iraq.

A Chambers and Partners Band 1 legal practice is now on standby to pursue an action to bring about a Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly, an action before the International Criminal Court against those who had brought slavery back to Libya, and an action before the High Court of Justiciary of Scotland inviting it to exercise its declaratory power against Blair and his accomplices in the aggression against Iraq in 2003.

All of these actions are to begin immediately upon my election to the House of Commons. As are the actions to bring about a Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Dawn Sturgess, and to challenge the legality of the recent bombing of Syria after the confirmation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that no nerve agent had been used at Douma.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and our people need to hold the balance of power in it. My crowdfunding page is here, or email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com for other options. That address accepts PayPal.

There is absolutely no evidence that "Chepiga" and "Boshirov" are the same person. None. Yet it is repeated as fact by the entire media. Well, of course it is.

And even Jeremy Corbyn, the principal living British victim of the Deep State, now feels obliged to give at least some credence to this drivel.

Does he hope that it will earn him some mercy from the original gangster state, and still the best, going strong since 1066? (Watch out for the centenary of the Armistice. As they say in Ireland, "We Know The Truth.")

If so, then what has become of him? Does he no longer speak to the miners, or to the Hillsborough families, or to the victims of blacklisting, or to anyone in the anti-war movement, to name but a few? Even I could tell him a thing or two.

As an old friend in the Conservative Party recently said to me, "If Jacob Rees-Mogg didn't have money, he'd have been to prison by now." Political dissidents are silenced in Britain. Not normally as drastically as in Russia, although that does happen. But no less effectively, even so.

There needs to be at least one MP who will have none of this. My crowdfunding page is here, or email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com for other options. That address accepts PayPal.

Torture, Guantánamo Bay, mass surveillance: these are the questions that Brett Kavanaugh ought to have been asked.

Not some Salem witch trial. Not some McCarthy hearing. Not some regression to the racist rape trials of the Old South. This.

But if Kavanaugh is confirmed, then not only will he have escaped this scrutiny, but the electoral damage to his supporters will last for a generation.

So what if, with his swing vote, "the Supreme Court would not strike down conservative legislation"? What conservative legislation? They are not going to be in a position to enact any. (Nor, by the way, would any of it ever have been about abortion.)

Is Kavanaugh their only possible nominee? Their determination to push him through, at catastrophic electoral damage to themselves, would seem to suggest that the Republican Party and the conservative movement had indeed arrived at that sorry pass.

More than 24 weeks after I had again been due to stand trial, I now no longer have a trial date, even though it is rightly a criminal offence to fail to attend one's trial.

Had I been tried, as expected, on 6th December, then, even had I been convicted, I would already have been released, since I would by now have served even the whole of a wildly improbable six month sentence.

The legal persecution of me, which has been going on for over a year, was initiated only in order to deter me from seeking public office or to prevent my election to it, and its continuation is only to one or both of those ends. Amnesty International is on the case.

Until there is anything to add to it, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

The Leader of Durham County Council, Simon Henig, was so afraid that I was going to be elected to that authority, that he faked a death threat against himself and dozens of other Councillors.

Despite the complete lack of evidence, that matter is still being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of the attempt by the sacked Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, to secure a Labour seat in one or other House of Parliament.

If I am wrong, then let Henig and Saunders sue me. Until they do, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

More than 24 weeks after I had again been due to stand trial, I now no longer have a trial date, even though it is rightly a criminal offence to fail to attend one's trial.

Had I been tried, as expected, on 6th December, then, even had I been convicted, I would already have been released, since I would by now have served even the whole of a wildly improbable six month sentence.

The legal persecution of me, which has been going on for over a year, was initiated only in order to deter me from seeking public office or to prevent my election to it, and its continuation is only to one or both of those ends. Amnesty International is on the case.

Until there is anything to add to it, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

The Leader of Durham County Council, Simon Henig, was so afraid that I was going to be elected to that authority, that he faked a death threat against himself and dozens of other Councillors.

Despite the complete lack of evidence, that matter is still being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of the attempt by the sacked Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, to secure a Labour seat in one or other House of Parliament.

If I am wrong, then let Henig and Saunders sue me. Until they do, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

The evidence mounts that Russia is not telling the truth about “Boshirov” and “Petrov”. If those were real identities, they would have been substantiated in depth by now.

As we know of Yulia Skripal’s boyfriend, cat, cousin and grandmother, real depth on the lives and milieu of “Boshirov” and “Petrov” would be got out.

It is plainly in the interests of Russia’s state and its oligarchy to establish that they truly exist, and concern for the privacy of individuals would be outweighed by that.

The rights of the individual are not prioritised over the state interest in Russia.
But equally the identification of “Boshirov” with “Colonel Chepiga” is a nonsense.

The problem is with Bellingcat’s methodology. They did not start with any prior intelligence that “Chepiga” is “Boshirov”.

They rather allegedly searched databases of GRU operatives of about the right age, then trawled photos in yearbooks of them until they found one that looked a bit like “Boshirov”.

And guess what? It looks a bit like “Boshirov”. If you ignore the substantially different skull shape and nose.

Only the picture on the left is Chepiga. The two on the right are from “Boshirov’s” Russian passport application file, and the photo of “Boshirov” issued by Scotland Yard.

Like almost the entire internet, I assumed both black and white photos were from Chepiga’s files, and was willing to admit the identification of Chepiga with “Boshirov” as valid.

But once you understand is that – as Bellingcat confirm if you read it closely – only the photo on the left is Chepiga, you start to ask questions.

The two guys on the right and the centre are undoubtedly the same person. But is the guy on the left the same, but younger?Betaface.com, which runs industry standard software, gives the faces an 83% similarity, putting the probability of them being the same person at 2.8%.

By comparison it gives me a 72% identity with Chepiga and a 2.1% chance of being him.

There is a superficial resemblance. But if you take the standard ratios used for facial recognition, you get a very different story.

If you draw a line between the centre of the pupils of the two guys centre and right, and then take a perpendicular from that line to the tip of the nose, you get a key ratio.

The two on the right both have a ratio of 100:75, which is unsurprising since they are the same person. The one on the left has a ratio of 100:68, which is very different.

To put that more simply, his nose is much shorter, and less certainly his eyes are further apart.

It is possible this could happen in photos but it still be the same person.

The head would have to be tilted backward or forward at quite a sharp angle to alter these ratios, which does not seem to be the case.

The camera could be positioned substantially above or below the subject, again not apparently the case. And the photo could be resized with height and width ratios changed.

That would hard to detect.

But the three white dots across the bottom of the nose are particularly compelling (the middle one largely obscured by a red dot in the Chepiga photo).

They illustrate that Chepiga has a snub nose and Boshirov something of a hook. Again, the software is reinforcing what they eye can plainly see.

However, there are also other ratios that are different.

Chepiga has a narrower mouth compared to the distance between the pupils than the two photos of “Boshirov”, and that is measured on the same plane.

The difference is 100-80 compared to 100-88. It is a ratio that can be changed by facial expression, but this does not seem to be the case here.

Professor Dame Sue Black of the University of Dundee is the world’s leading expert in facial forensic reconstruction. I once spent a fascinating lunch sitting next to her, while I was Rector.

I shall contact her for her view on whether the guy on the left is the same person, and if she is kind enough to give me an opinion, I shall pass it on to you unadulterated.

This website is less definitive, but gives a nice clear result, and you can repeat it yourself without having to subscribe (unlike Betaface.com).

Again for comparison, I tried two photos of myself 12 years apart and got “from nearly the same person”.
I

It is worth repeating that the only evidence that Chepiga is Boshirov offered by Bellingcat is this photo.

The rest of their article simply attempts to establish Chepiga’s career.

This is gross hypocrisy by Bellingcat, who have argued that scores of photos of White Helmets being Jihadi fighters are not valid evidence because you cannot safely recognise faces from photographs.

Yet Higgins now claims his facial identification of Chepiga as Boshirov as “definitive” and “conclusive”, despite the absence of moles, scars and blemishes.

Higgins stands exposed as a quite disgusting hypocrite.

Let me go further. I do not believe that Higgins did not take the elementary step of running facial recognition technology over the photos, and I believe he is hiding the results from you.

Is it not also astonishing that the mainstream media have not done this simple test?

The bulk of the Bellingcat article is just trying to prove the reality of the existence of Chepiga.

This is hard to evaluate, but as the evidence to link him to “Boshirov” is non-existent, is a different argument.

Having set out to find a GRU officer of the same age who looks a bit like “Boshirov”, they trumpet repeatedly the fact that Chepiga is about the same age as evidence, in a crass display of circular argument.

This unofficial website does indeed name Chepiga as a Hero of the Russian Federation and recipient of 20 awards, as Bellingcat claims.

But it is impossible to know if it is authentic, and by contrast there is no Chepiga on the official list of Heroes of the Russian Federation, for the stated 2014 or for any other year, which Bellingcat fail to mention.

Their other documents and anonymous sources are unverifiable.

The photo of the military school honours arch, with Chepiga added right at the end and not quite in line, looks to me very suspect.

My surmise so far would be that most likely Bellingcat’s source of supply is Ukrainian, and trying to tie the Skripal affair into the Ukrainian civil war via Chepiga.

My view of the most likely explanation on presently available evidence is this:
Boshirov is not Boshirov, and the Russian Government are lying.

Boshirov is not Chepiga, and Bellingcat are lying.

The whole Skripal novichok story still does not hang together, and the British Government are lying.

I will continue to form my opinions as further evidence becomes available.

And so we have come to this. The treatment of Bellingcat as if it were a serious source.

Leading to an entirely fawning "interview" on the Today programme with a former official historian of MI5, who told us that the incompetence of the Salisbury attack proved that it must be the work of the Russian "regime" that we were all supposed to fear so mortally.

There are people who sincerely believe this. They walk among us. They ought not to be allowed out on their own, if at all. But they walk among us, and they do a lot more than that. Even Jeremy Corbyn has now had to pander to them.

Well, I will not. Another hung Parliament is coming, and our people need to hold the balance of power in it. My crowdfunding page is here, or email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com for other options. That address accepts PayPal.

The only people who vote based on Brexit are the Southern Remainers who saved the Conservative Party from oblivion last year, but who are poised to deliver between 10 and 20 seats, if not more, to the Liberal Democrats at the next General Election. That reality will be the theme of next week’s Conservative Party Conference.

On that party’s outermost fringes are people who wish to see a necessarily one-sided trade deal with the United States. That said, that aspiration has in itself been shared for many years by the EU. But these are the weirdos rather than merely the nasties.

They look with hope to Donald Trump, who, struggling to read his own script, has just accused China of somehow interfering in the American midterm elections. Clinton groupies, you lost to this. No one wishes to hear another word from you. You are the problem.

This is one of the areas the votes of which decided the EU referendum. We voted to reject 39 years of failure under all three parties, going all the way back to the adoption of monetarism by the Callaghan Government in 1977, the year of my birth.

Brexit needs to meet our needs, which are for trade deals with the BRICS countries even while remaining thoroughly critical of their present governments, for integration into the Belt and Road Initiative, for full enjoyment of our freedom from the Single Market’s bans on such measures as State Aid and capital controls, for an extra £350 million per week for the National Health Service, and for the restoration of the United Kingdom’s historic fishing rights in accordance with international law: 200 miles, or to the median line.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and our people need to hold the balance of power in it, or else that will be held either by those whom the EU’s Thatcherism has always suited down to the ground, or by such fantasists as have apparently never noticed that that was what the EU was like.

Neither of those could be elected in the areas that decided the referendum. This we know, because they have already tried. Yet we could end up at their mercy.

We have to look after this one, just as we have to look after the corner of Africa where we first emerged. We still live there. But we now live everywhere else, too.

Space exploration depends on the highest possible view of the good, and therefore also the frankest possible recognition of the harm, that can be done by human beings in general and by the State in particular. Including in opening up commercial opportunities to which the same applies.

It also necessitates, not only the very big vision, but also the very long view, and an uncompromising internationalism. All in all, it is thoroughly Corbynesque. Meaning that it will be mocked to scorn until it "represents the new common sense of our time". The first of those stages will be painfully long.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and our people need to hold the balance of power in it. My crowdfunding page is here, or email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com for other options. That address accepts PayPal.

Saint Augustine held that a woman who had been raped could still claim to be a virgin. Perhaps Cherry Kavanaugh takes the same view in reverse, so that he had remained a virgin until a woman had had sex with him consensually, rather than simply until a woman had had sex with him at all?

Donald Trump has pretty much hung Kavanaugh out to dry. But nothing in his sexual history, and to be honest I am highly sceptical of the claims that are now being made about that, is any reason to deny him confirmation. The reason for that is that he believes that the President cannot be indicted. For anything. Ever.

More than 24 weeks after I had again been due to stand trial, I now no longer have a trial date, even though it is rightly a criminal offence to fail to attend one's trial.

Had I been tried, as expected, on 6th December, then, even had I been convicted, I would already have been released, since I would by now have served even the whole of a wildly improbable six month sentence.

The legal persecution of me, which has been going on for over a year, was initiated only in order to deter me from seeking public office or to prevent my election to it, and its continuation is only to one or both of those ends. Amnesty International is on the case.

Until there is anything to add to it, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

The Leader of Durham County Council, Simon Henig, was so afraid that I was going to be elected to that authority, that he faked a death threat against himself and dozens of other Councillors.

Despite the complete lack of evidence, that matter is still being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of the attempt by the sacked Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, to secure a Labour seat in one or other House of Parliament.

If I am wrong, then let Henig and Saunders sue me. Until they do, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

In view of the known facts of the case, if Madeleine McCann's parents had been a bus driver and a cleaner, never mind if they had been unemployed, then would they have been permitted to keep their other two children?

24 weeks, six months, after I had again been due to stand trial, I now no longer have a trial date, even though it is rightly a criminal offence to fail to attend one's trial.

Had I been tried, as expected, on 6th December, then, even had I been convicted, I would already have been released, since I would by now have served even the whole of a wildly improbable six month sentence.

The legal persecution of me, which has been going on for over a year, was initiated only in order to deter me from seeking public office or to prevent my election to it, and its continuation is only to one or both of those ends. Amnesty International is on the case.

Until there is anything to add to it, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

The Leader of Durham County Council, Simon Henig, was so afraid that I was going to be elected to that authority, that he faked a death threat against himself and dozens of other Councillors.

Despite the complete lack of evidence, that matter is still being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of the attempt by the sacked Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, to secure a Labour seat in one or other House of Parliament.

If I am wrong, then let Henig and Saunders sue me. Until they do, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

Tuesday, 25 September 2018

Is Keir Starmer wrong? Yes. Might it cost Labour votes and seats? No. If people voted on Brexit, then the Lib Dems would have taken 48 per cent of the vote last year.

Unless they had the good fortune to live in North West Durham, then where else might these particular voters go, anyway?

In any case, the Conservatives are probably going to do this in the end. They might have to get rid of Theresa May in order to do it. But that is a detail to them.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and our people need to hold the balance of power in it. My crowdfunding page is here, or email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com for other options. That address accepts PayPal.

The contaminated blood scandal is a sign of what would become of the National Health Service if the Liam Fox Tendency had its way and a post-Brexit trade deal with the United States brought in the American healthcare companies.

Mercifully, though, the right wings of both parties are now so peripheral that they are on the brink of secession. They are not, however, beyond that brink. They both know that if they were to put up as themselves, then no one would vote for them.

On the Labour side, that is now established beyond doubt. The Blairite rump has used its old trick of an all-women shortlist in an attempt to guarantee for itself the second Deputy Leadership that is otherwise going to be set up for no apparent reason.

But is practically certain that that position is in fact going to be filled by Angela Rayner, who is politically between Jeremy Corbyn and Tom Watson, and it is quite possible that she will be the only candidate.

If anyone can find something to do with what would otherwise be this non-job, then it is Angela. She is also a staunch supporter of the County Durham Teaching Assistants, having marched with them at the 2016 Durham Miners' Gala, and having signed their petition at my instigation. So much for the Blairite Right of the Labour Party.

As for the Thatcherite Right of the Conservative Party, its irrelevance was clear from Keir Starmer's Labour Party Conference speech, which simply assumed that the likes of the European Reform Group were going to have to vote with Labour against whatever Theresa May brought back, and which was instead addressed to the Conservatives who really mattered, namely the ones who wanted a second referendum, but this time between the EEA and Remain.

Despite May's instinctive sympathy for either of those options, and especially for the latter, she has set her face against such a referendum. But of course she has never been noted for consistency. Another of her screaming, arm-waving, "Nothing Has Changed" moments would seem to be in order.

Or something really would be changed, whether she liked it or not. Twice in the last 30 years, the Conservative Party Conference has cheered the Leader to the echo and that Leader has been out within a few weeks. One of those Leaders was a serving Prime Minister who had won three General Elections and who had an overall majority well into three figures. Compared to that, getting rid of May would be very small beer indeed.

The EEA-or-Remain referendum would then be held very early in 2019, even though Winter is hardly the ideal time in which to do this kind of thing. Reduction to a colony and a satrapy would be the only thing worse than staying in the EU, so vote Remain against the EEA and then resume the struggle the next day, as in 1973, in 1975, and in 1983.

But what else would change? The new Conservative Leader would be as committed as Jeremy Corbyn to the abolition of Universal Credit, May's Poll Tax. He, and it would almost certainly be he, would be as committed as Corbyn and May to the renaissance of council housing. He would probably be as committed as Corbyn, the Adam Smith Institute and The Economist to the Universal Basic Income.

He would certainly be as committed as Corbyn, and really May as well, to the implementation of the report of the IPPR Commission on Economic Justice, which is the Beveridge Report of our age, and which is the balm to heal the wounds with the Federation of Small Businesses, the National Farmers' Union, the Church of England, and a former Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management and former Commercial Secretary to the Treasury under David Cameron, writing in the Financial Times.

And he, like May, would be as receptive as Corbyn to the economic vision set out in John McDonnell's Labour Party Conference speech, excoriated as that has been by Thatcherites and Blairites who insist, if not always on the back of very much evidence, that they speak for and from "the real world". Well, if you were that good, then you would not have had a complete coup against you in both parties.

One party is now led by a Home Counties housewife of the kind that never asks what her husband does all day, and fills up her own time with the social side of the local Conservative Party, with her parish church, with the Women's Institute, and with the Girl Guides. "Real world" Thatcherites, this was the only person in the entire country whom your party considered capable of being Prime Minister. She still is.

The other party is now led by a man who has been either an MP or a full-time trade union official, and that in the public sector, for about 50 of his 69 years. "Real world" Blairites, this is who has beaten you. Twice.

Both Leaders will have thought that McDonnell had talked "a lot of common sense" yesterday. But remember, you are so much more capable than they are. That is why they are the Leaders and you are not.

The House of Commons will soon be made up very largely of those who now accrue to both political parties, namely the most bookishly bachelor sons of the heavily subsidised landed interest, and the most bookishly bachelor beneficiaries of the benefits system.

Both of those have always regarded it as a public good that their scholarship and their activism were effectively made possible by State funding. Both of them will feel that that view had been vindicated when, within the next 20 years and then for at least 80 thereafter, they provided more than 150 Conservative and more than 150 Labour MPs.

But there will still be all too many Thatcherites and Blairites next time. Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and our people need to hold the balance of power in it. My crowdfunding page is here, or email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com for other options. That address accepts PayPal.

More than 23 weeks after I had again been due to stand trial, I now no longer have a trial date, even though it is rightly a criminal offence to fail to attend one's trial.

Had I been tried, as expected, on 6th December, then, even had I been convicted, I would already have been released, since I would by now have served even the whole of a wildly improbable six month sentence.

The legal persecution of me, which has been going on for over a year, was initiated only in order to deter me from seeking public office or to prevent my election to it, and its continuation is only to one or both of those ends. Amnesty International is on the case.

Until there is anything to add to it, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

The Leader of Durham County Council, Simon Henig, was so afraid that I was going to be elected to that authority, that he faked a death threat against himself and dozens of other Councillors.

Despite the complete lack of evidence, that matter is still being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of the attempt by the sacked Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, to secure a Labour seat in one or other House of Parliament.

If I am wrong, then let Henig and Saunders sue me. Until they do, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

Monday, 24 September 2018

What will she be doing, this Deputy Deputy Leader of the Labour Party who will have to be a woman, something that in any case anyone can now become simply by saying so?

The Leadership and Deputy Leadership, which latter women have already won twice in fair competition, are already balanced between the Left and the traditional Right by the choice of exactly the same voters at exactly the same time.

But all-women shortlists have always been the device for imposing Blairites whether or not anyone wanted them.

Giving this to Jess Phillips would only heighten the frisson when she lost her seat to George Galloway, in third place behind John Hemming, and possibly in fourth behind the Conservative.

This new non-job is the consolation prize for the open selection of parliamentary candidates, which will come next year even if it did not come this year, and which will render all-women shortlists impossible.

It is too late for most of the local, at least mildly left-wing, and often working-class men who were arbitrarily kept out of Parliament for a generation by parachuted in, extremely right-wing, and impeccably upper-middle-class women.

But those men's spiritual and sometimes physical sons will soon have their day.

Indeed, between the followers of Jeremy Corbyn and the followers of Jacob Rees-Mogg, the archetypal MP of the twenty-first century is already in plain sight.

He is male, single and childless. He is immensely erudite, but he is academically quite undistinguished, because the things that interested him, from Classics to Marxist economics, were not on the curriculum.

Therefore, in the ordinary sense, he has barely, if ever, had a day job. That does usually mean that he knows very acutely what it is to be poor. It makes him completely indifferent to the opinion of the CBI, either on John McDonnell's speech, or on the eventual implementation of most or all of it by the Conservatives.

And it makes him a good MP, since the money is more than he would ever otherwise have had, since he has no one else to worry about, since he has little or no concept of normal working hours, since his dependence on public transport poses no difficulty in central London (and he can now afford the taxis even there, anyway), and since he has been receiving verbal and even physical abuse since the day that he started school.

After the next General Election, there will be dozens of Labour MPs like that. After the next General Election but one, there will be scores of Labour and Conservative MPs like that. After the next General Election but two, there will be more than 150 of each.

No matter how bad the Israelites were, God never made them have a second referendum on the EU.

All the things that you like about Jeremy Corbyn, they are the reasons why he and John McDonnell have been against the EU for as long as there has been an EU, and they are the reasons why Dennis Skinner still openly is.

Parties far to the left of anywhere that the British Labour Party will ever be have repeatedly been part of governing coalitions in several other EU countries.

If the wretched thing were capable of being reformed, then someone would have done it by now.

I am just back from a family funeral – one of a succession – and a combination of circumstances had left me feeling pretty down lately, and not blogging much.

But I have to drag myself to the keyboard to denounce a quite extraordinary set of deliberate lies published in the Guardian about a Russian plot to spring Julian Assange last December.

I was closely involved with Julian and with Fidel Narvaez of the Ecuadorean Embassy at the end of last year in discussing possible future destinations for Julian.

It is not only the case that Russia did not figure in those plans, it is a fact that Julian directly ruled out the
I have no idea who the Guardian’s “anonymous sources” are, but I know 100% for certain that the entire story of a Russian plot to extract Julian from the Embassy last Christmas Eve is a complete and utter fabrication.

I strongly suspect that, as usual, MI6 tool Luke Harding’s “anonymous sources” are in fact the UK security services, and this piece is entirely black propaganda produced by MI6.

It is very serious indeed when a newspaper like the Guardian prints a tissue of deliberate lies in order to spread fake news on behalf of the security services.

I cannot find words eloquent enough to express the depth of my contempt for Harding and Katherine Viner, who have betrayed completely the values of journalism.

The aim of the piece is evidently to add a further layer to the fake news of Wikileaks’ (non-existent) relationship to Russia as part of the “Hillary didn’t really lose” narrative. I am, frankly, rather shocked.

He adds:

One reason I was so stunned at the Guardian’s publication of these lies is that I had gone direct from the Ecuadorean Embassy to the Guardian building in Kings Cross to give an in-depth but off the record briefing to Euan MacAskill, perhaps their last journalist of real integrity, on the strategy for Julian.

I told Euan that Russia was ruled out. I did not mention this yesterday as I greatly respect Euan and wanted to speak to him first.

But on phoning the Guardian I find that Euan “retired” the day the lying article was published. That seems a very large coincidence.

The Metropolitan Police made one statement in the Skripal case which is plainly untrue; they claimed not to know on what kind of visa Boshirov and Petrov were travelling.

As they knew the passports they used, and had footage of them coming through the airport, that is impossible. The Border Force could tell them in 30 seconds flat.

To get a UK visa Boshirov and Petrov would have had to attend the UK Visa Application Centre in Moscow.

There not only would their photographs be taken, but their fingerprints would have been taken and, if in the last few years, their irises scanned.

The Metropolitan Police would naturally have obtained their fingerprints from the Visa Application.

One thing of which we can be certain is that their fingerprints are not on the perfume bottle or packaging found in Charlie Rowley’s home.

We can be certain of that because no charges have been brought against the two in relation to the death of Dawn Sturgess, and we know the police have their fingerprints.

The fact of there being no credible evidence, according to either the Metropolitan Police or the Crown Prosecution Service, to link them to the Amesbury poisoning, has profound implications.

Why the Metropolitan Police were so coy about telling us what kind of visa the pair held, points to a wider mystery. Why were they given the visas in the first place, and what story did they tell to get them?

It is not easy for a Russian citizen, particularly an economically active male, to get past the UK Border Agency. The visa application process is very intrusive.

They have to produce evidence of family and professional circumstances, including employment and address, evidence of funds, including at least three months of bank statements, and evidence of the purpose of the visit.

These details are then actively checked out by the Visa Department.

If they had told the story to the visa section they told to Russia Today, that they were freelance traders in fitness products wanting to visit Salisbury Cathedral, they would have been refused a visa as being candidates for overstaying.

They would have been judged not to have sufficiently stable employment in Russia to ensure they would return.

So what story did Petrov and Boshirov give on their visa application, why were they given a visa, and what kind of visa?

And why do the British authorities not want us to know the answer to these questions? Which brings us to the claims of neoconservative propaganda website Bellingcat.

They claim together with the Russian Insider website to have obtained documentary evidence that Petrov and Boshirov’s passports were of a series issued only to Russian spies, and that their applications listed GRU headquarters as their address.

There are some problems with Bellingcat’s analysis.

The first is that they also quote Russian website fontanka.ru as a source, but fontanka.ru actually say the precise opposite of what Bellingcat claim – that the passport number series is indeed a civilian one and civilians do have passports in that series.

Fontanka also state it is not unusual for the two to have close passport numbers – it merely means they applied together.

On other points, fontanka.ru do confirm Bellingcat’s account of another suspected GRU officer having serial numbers close to those of Boshirov and Petrov.

But there is a bigger question of the authenticity of the documents themselves.

Fontanka.ru is a blind alley – they are not the source of the documents, just commenting on them, and Bellingcat are just attempting the old trick of setting up a circular “confirmation”.

Russian Insider is neither Russian nor an Insider.

Its name is a false claim and it consists of a combination of western “experts” writing on Russia, and reprints from the Russian media.

It has no track record of inside access to Russian government secrets or documents, and nor does Bellingcat.

What Bellingcat does have is a track record of shilling for the security services.

Bellingcat claims its purpose is to clear up fake news, yet has been entirely opaque about the real source of its so-called documents.

MI6 have almost 40 officers in Russia, running hundreds of agents. The CIA has a multiple of that. They pool their information.

Both the UK and US have large visa sections whose major function is the analysis of Russian passports, their types and numbers and what they tell about the individual.

We are to believe that Boshirov and Petrov were GRU agents whose identity was plainly obvious from their passports, who had no believable cover identities, but that neither the visa department nor MI6 (which two cooperate closely and all the time) knew they were giving visas to GRU agents.

Yet this information was readily available to Bellingcat?

I do not know if the two are agents or just tourists.

But the claimed evidence they were agents is, if genuine, so obvious that the two would have been under close surveillance throughout their stay in the UK.

If the official story is true, then the failures of the UK visa department and MI6 are abject and shameful.

As is the failure to take simple precautions for the Skripals’ security, like the inexplicable absence of CCTV covering the house of Sergei Skripal, an important ex-agent and defector supposedly under British protection.

A further thought. We are informed that Boshirov and Petrov left a trace of novichok in their hotel bedroom.

How likely is it, really, that, the day before the professional assassination attempt, which involved handling an agent with which any contact could kill you, Boshirov and Petrov would prepare, not by resting, but by an all night drugs and sex session?

Would you really not want the steadiest possible hand the next day?

Would you really invite a prostitute into the room with the novichok perfume in it, and behave in a way that led to complaints and could have brought you to official notice?

Is it not astonishing that nobody in the corporate and state media has written that this behaviour is at all unlikely, while scores of “journalists” have written that visiting Salisbury as a tourist, and returning the next day because the visit was ruined by snow, would be highly unlikely?

To me, even more conclusively, we were informed by cold war propagandists like ex White House staffer Dan Kaszeta that the reason the Skripals were not killed is that novichok is degraded by water.

To quote Kaszeta “Soap and water is quite good at decontaminating nerve agents”.

In which case it is extremely improbable that the agents handling the novichok, who allegedly had the novichok in their bedroom, would choose a hotel room which did not have an en suite bathroom?

If I spilt some novichok on myself I would not want to be queuing in the corridor for the shower.

The GRU may not be big on health and safety, but the idea that their agents chose not to have basic washing facilities available while handling the novichok is wildly improbable.

The only link of Boshirov and Petrov to the novichok is the trace in the hotel room.

The identification there of a microscopic trace of novichok came from a single swab, all other swabs were negative, and the test could not be repeated even on the original positive sample.

For other reasons given above, I absolutely doubt these two had novichok in that bedroom.

Who they really are, and how much the security services knew about them, remain open questions.

Ignore his shilling for the egregious Norway Option, the only thing worse than staying in the EU, and read instead these wise words of Peter Hitchens:

Stupid people keep saying that supporters of railway renationalisation can’t remember what British Rail was like. Oh, yes I can.

And if BR had been given the money poured into the pockets of the privatised rail pirates, it would now be running far, far better services than we currently have.

On Friday, I was late for work because it had been windy the night before – and this on a line where privatised operators have had the benefit of more than £1 billion in modernisation.

Parts of this have already cost three times what was planned, everything is years behind time and will probably never be finished.

Nationalised BR completed a similar scheme only eight weeks late and within £15 million of its predicted budget.

And:

I am going to keep saying this.

Most of the supposed Islamist terror attacks in Europe (and many of the non-Islamist massacres elsewhere) involve people who have been taking either marijuana, steroids or so-called ‘antidepressants’.

The inquest into the Westminster outrage shows clearly that the killer Khalid Masood, a violent criminal, took steroids and suffered from the terrifying ‘roid rage’, which apologists for these dangerous drugs claim is a myth.

Other mass killers who took steroids include the very non-Muslim Anders Breivik.

And:

I didn't expect or even want to like the new BBC series Killing Eve, starring Jodie Comer as a distractingly beautiful embodiment of pure evil.
The trailers put me off.

But the programme itself is an unexpected joy, looking and sounding witty, refusing to treat viewers as idiots, and, actually, a lot better than the overrated Bodyguard.

And:

The PM has started to be nice about social housing, or council housing as we used to call it.

She says: ‘I want to see social housing that is so good people are proud to call it their home… Our friends and neighbours who live in social housing are not second-rate citizens.’

Good, though anyone who recalls the council housing of the 1960s and 1970s (I was myself briefly a council tenant in the 1970s) would say that most council house residents were house-proud and often very pleased to have a secure well-maintained place to live.

I am sick of people saying the great sell-off of council homes was a good thing.

It flooded the housing market with taxpayers’ money and sent prices spinning upwards forever. It broke up communities.

And it began the expensive, wasteful disaster of housing benefit which, the last time I looked, cost more than the RAF every year.

I don’t know if we can ever put this right again, but admitting we made a mistake by breaking up the old council estates would be good.

It may come as a shock to the Recusants or the Irish, but the appointment of Catholic bishops with at least the heavy involvement of the civil power is the historical norm. Saint Thomas of Canterbury was made an archbishop directly by Henry II.

Until as recently as 1870, even the appointment of bishops in the Papal States, which covered much of central and northern Italy, was made by the Pope in his capacity as the civil ruler. Relatively few other bishops in the world, and especially in Europe or around the Mediterranean, were appointed by the Pope, or ever had been.

Appointments have been made by monarchs who were required to be Protestants and by Presidents who were sworn to uphold State secularism, by Byzantine Emperors and by Tsars of All the Russias, by Ottoman Sultans who were the Caliphs of every Sunni Muslim in the world, and now by representatives of the Chinese Communist Party.

The Church has survived, and She will continue to survive.

She survives in Alsace-Lorraine, where this function is carried out by the President of the Jacobins' Republic in succession to the Kings of Prussia, who were themselves so Protestant that they were the cousins of our own dear Royal Family.

More than 23 weeks after I had again been due to stand trial, I now no longer have a trial date, even though it is rightly a criminal offence to fail to attend one's trial.

Had I been tried, as expected, on 6th December, then, even had I been convicted, I would already have been released, since I would by now have served even the whole of a wildly improbable six month sentence.

The legal persecution of me, which has been going on for over a year, was initiated only in order to deter me from seeking public office or to prevent my election to it, and its continuation is only to one or both of those ends. Amnesty International is on the case.

Until there is anything to add to it, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

The Leader of Durham County Council, Simon Henig, was so afraid that I was going to be elected to that authority, that he faked a death threat against himself and dozens of other Councillors.

Despite the complete lack of evidence, that matter is still being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of the attempt by the sacked Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, to secure a Labour seat in one or other House of Parliament.

If I am wrong, then let Henig and Saunders sue me. Until they do, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

On Newsnight last night, Iain Martin seemed aghast at Paul Mason's suggestion of any kind of rapprochement between business and John McDonnell. Martin needs to get out more. The Tory family has fallen apart.

Much of the intellectual weight for the Corbyn project is being supplied by the Church of England. Jeremy Corbyn has been endorsed by name by the National Farmers' Union and by the Federation of Small Businesses, endorsements that Tony Blair certainly never received.

Lord O'Neill, a former Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management who went on to serve as Commercial Secretary to the Treasury under David Cameron, has endorsed Corbyn and McDonnell in the pages of the Financial Times. Even the Adam Smith Institute and The Economist are in favour of the Universal Basic Income. Even Theresa May has slaughtered the Thatcherite holy cow of continuing to defend the sale of council houses.

And so on. Martin sounds like one of those bitter old Blairites. But in fact, his is a position that is now more marginal even than it was in the Heath years. It was last this far from the mainstream 20 years earlier again, during the Indian Summer Premiership of Winston Churchill, when "free" market Conservatives were denied office in a Government full of people whose roots were in the Liberal Party and its splinter organisations, or in the Labour Party and its splinter organisations, or outside politics altogether.

If May were to be removed, then the presenting issue might be to force a second referendum, between Remain and the only thing worse, some kind of "Norway Option". The people doing the forcing could live with either.

But mostly, they would be concerned to abolish Universal Credit, a political need that is now as pressing as the abolition of the Poll Tax was in 1990, and as impossible to meet without a change of Prime Minister. And they would be concerned to implement the report of the IPPR Commission on Economic Justice, which would then be the Beveridge Report of our age, guaranteed to be implemented regardless of the outcome of the next General Election, just as Beveridge was guaranteed to be implemented regardless of the outcome of the 1945 General Election.

Of course, just as the Attlee Government went far further than Beveridge, so a Corbyn-led Government would go far further than the IPPR. But no one suggests that the next Conservative-led Government would reverse any part of the Corbyn Settlement. It would be just that: the Settlement. And the Conservative Party would do just that: conserve it.

Note, by the way, that use of "led". Neither party has won an overall majority within the law since as long ago as 2005, and there would have been a hung Parliament then if the Conservatives had had the wit to oppose the Iraq War. Two of the last three General Elections have resulted in hung Parliaments, and the one in the middle would also have done so if the Conservatives had not overspent, which they do not deny having done. The Crown Prosecution Service merely decided not to pursue the matter, because there had been another General Election in the meantime. Make of that what you will.

But I digress. The abolition of Universal Credit, and the implementation of the report of the IPPR Commission on Economic Justice, are now the only way for the Conservative Party to secure so much as a hearing from what are otherwise the explicitly Corbynite Federation of Small Businesses, the explicitly Corbynite National Farmers' Union, the actively Corbynite Church of England, and the likes of Lord O'Neill, a former Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management and a former Commercial Secretary to the Treasury under David Cameron, writing in the Financial Times in support of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell.

The removal of Theresa May in order to secure all of that might be presented in terms of a securing a referendum between Remain and full EU colonial status. But that would be only the excuse, as "Europe" was only the excuse for removing the Prime Minister without whom the Poll Tax was going to condemn the Conservative Party to electoral oblivion.

In any event, however, it will have nothing to do with Iain Martin. He needs to get out more.

More than 23 weeks after I had again been due to stand trial, I now no longer have a trial date, even though it is rightly a criminal offence to fail to attend one's trial.

Had I been tried, as expected, on 6th December, then, even had I been convicted, I would already have been released, since I would by now have served even the whole of a wildly improbable six month sentence.

The legal persecution of me, which has been going on for over a year, was initiated only in order to deter me from seeking public office or to prevent my election to it, and its continuation is only to one or both of those ends. Amnesty International is on the case.

Until there is anything to add to it, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

The Leader of Durham County Council, Simon Henig, was so afraid that I was going to be elected to that authority, that he faked a death threat against himself and dozens of other Councillors.

Despite the complete lack of evidence, that matter is still being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of the attempt by the sacked Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, to secure a Labour seat in one or other House of Parliament.

If I am wrong, then let Henig and Saunders sue me. Until they do, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

Friday, 21 September 2018

There are those who are appalled at my openness to a "No Deal" Brexit because it would open the door to deals with the BRICS countries, to integration into the Belt and Road Initiative, and so on.

Well, that is where the money is. Get on the bus, or fall under it.

If they do not necessarily like or trust us all that much in some of the countries in question, then I think you'll find that there is historical bad blood between Britain and several EU countries, too. Even more so now, in fact.

And the choice is not between this and the EU. It is between this and a deal with America that would include the privatisation of the NHS.

The EU has also sought such a deal with the US in the past, and it will do so again. Meanwhile, the Liam Fox crowd has already published its blueprint for our own.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and our people need to hold the balance of power in it. My crowdfunding page is here, or email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com for other options. That address accepts PayPal.

Today is Saint Matthew's Day. Consider that that erstwhile tax-collector is the Patron Saint of Bankers.

Consider also that that strange and increasingly unfashionable thing, Biblical criticism, purports to read the Bible "as if it were any other ancient text", yet in fact subjects it to a series of methods that would be laughed out in any other literary or historical discipline. Those methods are carefully constructed to "prove" the presuppositions of that strange and increasingly unfashionable thing, liberal theology.

Thus, if two Biblical books are word for word alike, as Matthew, Mark and Luke certainly are in parts, then they must have been copied from each other, since there is no way that God could have inspired them all and, funnily enough, done so in such a way that they confirmed each other's accounts.

Hence the theory of Markan Priority, that Saint Mark's Gospel was the first to be written, and that Saint Matthew and Saint Luke copied out great chunks of it word for word. And hence the theory of Q, the compendium of the material found in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark; no copy of Q exists anywhere.

Jesus simply did not claim divinity for Himself, so that rules out John at a stroke. Miracles simply do not happen, a position not even compatible with agnosticism. Style simply does not develop (seriously), so Saint Paul cannot have written several of the Epistles beginning with the words, "From Paul". And so on, and on, and on. Academia is at last moving away from this sort of thing. When will the Church in practice, since of course She has never adopted it, and cannot do so, in principle?

Perhaps a gentle fillip from the wider culture might be in order? Although they differ in length, the different structures of the Gospels mean that they could each be dramatised in 12 episodes of one hour apiece, perhaps running from January to March, i.e., more or less from Christmas to Easter. The order ought to be as in the Bible – Matthew, Mark, Luke, John – exactly as if any other ancient text were the subject.

That might even provide an opportunity to do some taking apart of the ridiculous theories of Markan Priority, of the interpolation of Mark 16, of "the Gospel of Thomas" and other such Dan Brown drivel, and of the historical unreliability of Saint John's Gospel on the grounds that Jesus "never claimed to be divine", the "proof" of which is held to be the historical unreliability of Saint John's Gospel.

All of these pieces of nonsense continue to be peddled by half-formed schoolteachers, and by clergy too old to have been part of the traditionalist revival among Catholics or the Evangelical revival among Protestants. Markan Priority was disproved a very long time ago by Saint Augustine, whose Wikipedia pages in Portuguese and Slovene are significant source of traffic to this site, as is the page on U and non-U English. Make of those facts what you will.

Acts could also be dramatised in this way, and it has some great stories in it. But it looks as if they would do the Ramayana first, and stick to the text if they did. That is not treating the Bible as a work of world literature, which is what they would claim that it was, and which, among other things, it is.

Why not dramatise the Ramayana, exactly as it is? Why not dramatise the Odyssey, exactly as it is? And why not dramatise the Four Canonical Gospels and Acts, exactly as they are? Of what are the television companies afraid? Of what, in practice even though not in principle, would the Church be afraid?

Do not bother asking why either party is not miles ahead of the other one. Under no Leader would that be the case, because Britain is no longer that country.

Neither party has won an overall majority within the law since as long ago as 2005, and there would have been a hung Parliament then if the Conservatives had had the wit to oppose the Iraq War.

Either the Conservative Party or the Labour Party is always going to be the largest party in the House of Commons, so that the Leader of one or the other will always be the Prime Minister. That would remain the case even if the electoral system were to be changed.

But neither party is going to win anything more than the tiniest, if any, overall majority for many decades, if ever. Again, that would and will be as true under First Past the Post as under anything else.

Two of the last three General Elections have resulted in hung Parliaments, and the one in the middle would also have done so if the Conservatives had not overspent, which they do not deny having done. The Crown Prosecution Service merely decided not to pursue the matter, because there had been another General Election in the meantime. Make of that what you will.

So another hung Parliament is coming, no matter what, and our people need to hold the balance of power in it. My crowdfunding page is here, or email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com for other options. That address accepts PayPal.

The net is closing around Tony Blair. In addition to everything else, he knew about Mark Kennedy, and about all of the others.

A Chambers and Partners Band 1 legal practice is now on standby to pursue an action to bring about a Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly, an action before the International Criminal Court against those who had brought slavery back to Libya, and an action before the High Court of Justiciary of Scotland inviting it to exercise its declaratory power against Blair and his accomplices in the aggression against Iraq in 2003.

All of these actions are to begin immediately upon my election to the House of Commons. As are the actions to bring about a Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Dawn Sturgess, and to challenge the legality of the recent bombing of Syria after the confirmation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that no nerve agent had been used at Douma.

And this? Why ever not.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and our people need to hold the balance of power in it. My crowdfunding page is here, or email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com for other options. That address accepts PayPal.

There are those who will vote against any Brexit, no matter what: the SNP, the Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru, Caroline Lucas, probably Sylvia Hermon, and certainly a tiny number of Conservative MPs.

And there are those who will vote to bring down this Government, no matter what: almost certainly everyone who was elected as a Labour MP, with only John Woodcock as a possible exception.

But then there is the DUP. Which prospect does it hate more? Giving the keys to 10 and 11 Downing Street to Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, who will die eventually? Or drawing a permanent border all the way down the Irish Sea?

So, is the Public Accounts Committee part of some Trotskyist plot, then? Or was it Jeremy Corbyn who caused this shortfall of £20 billion? How much? And that is only the shortfall on the support infrastructure. Just scrap this whole wretched thing.

We need the cancellation of Trident in favour of rebuilding the conventional Armed Forces, in favour of care for veterans, in favour of flood defences, and in favour of an “all of the above” energy policy based around civil nuclear power and around this country’s vast reserves of coal, with the commanding heights in reformed public ownership, with no need for fracking even in its own terms, and with the requirement of the approval of the House of Commons before energy or water prices could be increased.

In the case of Trident, we could pay the affected shipyard workers quite eye-watering sums in compensation, and still save amounts that there were scarcely the adjectives to describe.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and our people need to hold the balance of power in it. My crowdfunding page is here, or email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com for other options. That address accepts PayPal.